As the use of IP based multi-media becomes more prominent as an alternative to traditional broadcast services, the need for applications to be more dynamic, robust, and of quality exists. As an example, encoding digital audio for transmission or storage can introduce unwanted artifacts that when decoded and rendered can affect sound quality. An example artifact is called pre-echo. Pre-echo is an audio codec artifact where an echo of a sound can be heard in the decoded signal before the actual sound. Pre-echo can be caused by quantization and other inaccuracies that can occur when converting from time domain to frequency domain and then back to time domain, such as using an MDCT to transform a time domain signal into frequency domain and then using an Inverse MDCT to transform back to time domain. The effect is due to the spreading of the error across the block size of the transform, causing both leading and trailing echoing of the audio content. The effect is especially noticeable in audio with sharp impulses and transient signals, such as percussive instruments e.g., castanets. Existing codec technology fails to effectively control or eliminate these artifacts at desired bit rates. In addition, media distribution has already begun to shift from traditional network broadcast services, i.e. dedicated, controlled, and expensive, to an IP network based distribution, which is not dedicated, controlled, and expensive, but rather distributed, dynamic, less expensive, and that does not require fixed bit rates. However, due to inherent latencies and quality of service issues in the distributed network, streaming services have not fully evolved. But as they do evolve, how content is distributed and managed also needs to evolve.